


More Like a Memory

by ReluctantRavenclaw



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Canon Era, F/M, Illness, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Injury, M/M, Modern AU, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2017-12-10
Packaged: 2019-02-13 02:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12973869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReluctantRavenclaw/pseuds/ReluctantRavenclaw
Summary: In every lifetime, again and again, John Laurens dies. Well, everyone dies, and nobody understands this particular sentiment more than one Alexander Hamilton, but in any case, John Laurens always dies first. It doesn’t seem to matter where they are or when they are. The end result is always the same. John Laurens always dies first, and Alex is always left behind to pick up the pieces. They often look different, and on rare occasions, they have different names, but those are small matters, compared to the other issue at hand. John always dies.





	More Like a Memory

In every lifetime, again and again, John Laurens dies. Well, everyone dies, and nobody understands this particular sentiment more than one Alexander Hamilton, but in any case, John Laurens always dies first. It doesn’t seem to matter where they are or when they are. The end result is always the same. John Laurens always dies first, and Alex is always left behind to pick up the pieces. They often look different, and on rare occasions, they have different names, but those are small matters, compared to the other issue at hand. John always dies.

Sometimes Alex is there to watch it happen, and the same feeling of helplessness and overwhelming grief envelops him every time. Sometimes he is by John’s side, sitting in the passenger seat when the drunk driver crashes into them. He blinks blood out of his eyes and holds onto any part of John he can reach and waits for the ambulance that never seems to get there in time. Even on the rare occasions when the ambulance does get there, Alex watches John bleed out on the way to the hospital, or the surgeon comes to deliver bad news in the waiting room, or days later, there’s an unforeseen complication and John is gone all the same. Other times still, he is pushed aside, out of harm’s way, so John can take the fall, the bullet, instead of him. Alex would return the favour a hundred times over without a moment’s hesitation, but he never can. John Laurens always dies first after all. 

When he’s not there, that same feeling of helplessness consumes him, only it’s coupled with guilt that he wasn’t there to hold John’s hand and that he let him die alone. His dreams, and his waking moments too, are filled with the same image again and again; John, alone, gasping out his last, nobody there to see the moment when his chest stills and his eyes glaze over. Too many times, Alex is alone in the apartment, or in his office, or the General’s tent, depending on the time of course, when he receives the most devastating news. It comes from a grave looking police officer at the door, or a frantic phone call from the hospital or a harried looking messenger boy imploring him to come to the medical tent right this instant. 

Sometimes they’re friends, sometimes they’re more than friends, sometimes they barely know each other, and that’s almost worse, in a way. Knowing John, being friends, being in love and losing him is one thing. Barely having him in his life in the first place and losing him is quite another. These times, Alex loses John in all senses of the word, not least because he loses any potential for a life with him in the future, and he loses John without ever really getting a chance to know him in the first place.

One day, seemingly out of the blue, Eliza asks him if he remembers John Laurens from college. He does, of course he does. Laurens existed on the periphery of their friendship group, occasionally drifting in whenever he felt like it, but he had this way of speaking to someone like they were the only person in the world that always made Alex wish he would stick around for good next time. Eliza, a shocked look on her face and tears sparkling in her dark eyes, tells him that John Laurens, their sort of friend from college, killed himself a couple of days ago. 

That night, Alex dreams of a little boy with his eyes and Eliza’s smile and John Laurens’ curly hair and he feels a strange sort of contented happiness, no matter how improbable it is, and he doesn’t dare question where the dream comes from. He shifts in his sleep, and the next moment, the little boy is all grown up, and Alex is holding him in his arms, the boy’s blood covering his hands and his clothes and his blank, dark eyes stare right through him. Alex wakes up sweating and can’t answer Eliza truthfully when she concernedly asks him why he’s crying. He can’t tell her that he’s weeping because the boy in his dreams looked just like how he remembered John Laurens from college and because he’s quite certain that nobody was there to hold John Laurens in their arms as he died. 

Once, Alex gets a call from John’s partner, a man Alex has never warmed to but he knows that he makes John happy and that’s the main thing, to say that, sadly, John got in an accident on the way to work. Alex isn’t there for him that time, but at least someone was, he tries to reason with himself in the dark days that follow. 

Alex never sees it coming. And that’s the worst part. No matter how it happens.

Sometimes Alex knows John for years. It doesn’t happen often, but the lives where they both get to grow old and die peacefully are some of the very best. Of course, John still goes first, but somehow, it doesn’t sting quite as much when Alex knows he lived a good, long life and wasn’t frightened towards the end. Going peacefully in one’s sleep seems like such a cliche way to go, but Alex would take that, rather than the alternative, a million times over.

Rather than a candle, burning long and bright and only fading when it’s time, John acts like a firework in Alex’s life - appearing suddenly in his darkness, exploding in a fantastic show of light and colour, then vanishing as quickly as he arrived. They’re at a protest, which seems like the most logical place to meet John yet, in the middle of New York City on a blistering summer afternoon. Both are alone, and suddenly they’re quite literally pushed together, and somehow their hands find each other. Alex is simply enamoured with this exciting stranger, with his close cropped hair and lanky legs and piercing blue eyes this time around. He talks incessantly, which is normally Alex’s gig, and every word is filled with such passion and intelligence that Alex wants to marry this beautiful bastard right there on the spot. It’s a rather ironic thought, given that they’re protesting their inability to do just that. Things go sour, as they surely must, and their march, which began as a peaceful protest quickly turns violent. Alex wants to run, to protect himself and the handsome boy he’s hand in hand with. The same handsome boy who, a moment later, seems to stumble right into his arms, shockingly scarlet blood trickling from the corner of his open mouth, those piercing blue eyes staring blankly ahead. 

Other times still, Alex doesn’t know John at all, at least not in person anyway. He admires the outspoken senator’s even more outspoken son from afar, often replying to some of his online posts, and getting replies back from time to time. They share a lot of the same ideas and Alex admires the guy for using the platform he has to make himself heard. He sees him once, at some gala in DC that neither of them have any business attending but he doesn’t say anything, and neither does John. After all, Alex is too busy avoiding security who are trying, unsuccessfully, to remove him from the premises and John is getting into one of his infamous arguments with his father over the hors d'oeuvres. The press is normally all over that and will report on the latest Laurens family spat in every sordid detail, but on this particular night, a more pressing story takes precedence. Sometime after John storms away from his livid father, and the security have finally caught up with Alex, the former has an asthma attack in a dark corridor of the government building. It’s hours before anyone finds him, pale and still with blue lips and fingertips, and by then it’s much too late. When Alex reads the news the next morning, his first reaction is one of shock. His second is overwhelming anger. What a waste. What a goddamn waste. Why did nobody think to look for him sooner? Why did nobody notice that he was gone for so long? Alex would have noticed, he thinks angrily, he could have done something. Maybe he could have found John Laurens in time. He knows, however, in his very heart of hearts, that he couldn’t have. He doesn’t - didn’t - know the guy, not really, and besides, Laurens didn’t have his inhaler on him. If he had such bad asthma that it would eventually kill him, why the fuck didn’t he have his inhaler with him? 

In one life, a nice if slightly strange life, Alex and John stand in Central Park on a crisp Fall morning, watching their children play together. John’s daughter has a couple of years on Alex’s son, but he almost keeps pace with her, and has the time of his life chasing her round the playground. They part ways as normal at lunchtime, a friendly hug and a promise to do it again next week. It’s Frances who watches her father die that afternoon, Frances who holds his hand and waits for the ambulance, and Alex who gets the call sometime that evening and wishes they’d stayed at the park just a few minutes longer, like the kids had begged.

They fight in wars. It seems that every other lifetime, there’s a new war to be fought and won or lost. They fight together sometimes, on opposite ends of the world other times. They meet in a field hospital once, in a far flung European field, and John, the ever diligent army doctor, removes a bullet from Alex’s shoulder. It’s a strange role reversal. For once, Alex is the one bleeding out on a stretcher and John is the one hovering above him. His hands are skilled and practised though, and Alex lives to tell the tale. Just like he always does. Alex hopes to return to see the handsome field doctor one day, when the war is over maybe, but it doesn’t work out that day. He later finds out that the hospital was bombed a week or two after he left.

They fight on opposite sides just once, and that time might just be the worst. That time, Alex is the one to pull the trigger and watches with a kind of morbid fascination as his bullet hit its mark and the soldier crumples at his feet, his face forever contorted into an expression of extreme surprise. He has a terrible conversation with the General that night who informs him that he just murdered one of their best spies, who’d been working undercover for months to pass them all the secrets of the other side. Alex will never be able to get that moment out of his mind. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees the ally dressed up in the enemy’s uniform and listens to the dull thud his body made when it hit the ground. He takes to staring at his gun instead, the same gun that killed that man, and wonders if he pointed at his own head, would the terrible pictures in his mind go away? 

They get shipped off to Vietnam together and Alex thinks he might just have made the best friend of his life. They’re bunk mates in training camp and they stick to each other like a couple of band aids when the fighting starts, hatching their grand schemes for when they finally get to go home. John wants to see the world without a rifle in his hand, and Alex wants to make a name for himself. They promise to do just that when they get sent home, and they each promise not to die. John comes so close to keeping that particular promise, just this once, but before the ink on their release papers can dry, John steps on a landmine, allowing the rest of their squadron to escape unscathed, and that’s the end of that. Alex never sees him again. Until he does.

In one battle in the middle of one war, Alex can’t name it as they all begin to blur together, he gets a bullet to the leg and the ground comes rushing up to meet him, a dull ringing in his ears. He gets carried off to the makeshift hospital, even though he knows the prognosis isn’t good. He’s either going to lose his leg or his life at this rate; he can practically already feel the infection racing through his bloodstream. He’s burning hot and freezing cold at the same time, every part of him aches and it gets harder and harder to draw breathe with every passing moment. He’s dumped rather unceremoniously on the only free cot in the place and left alone until the immensely overworked surgeon has a spare second to check him over. He turns away, trying to distract himself as the wound in his leg is prodded, and his eyes fall on the man in the bed next to him. If he had enough breath left with which to do so, he would gasp aloud at the sight of his dear Laurens stretched out there, chest completely saturated with dark blood and skin ashen beneath the grime of the battlefield. Alex manages to draw just enough breath to call his name, but Laurens is either too far gone to hear him, or else he simply lacks the strength to respond. Alex knows his friend isn’t long for this world, but neither is he, so he does the only thing he can think of and stretches out a trembling hand, grabbing Laurens’ hand before his own strength fails him. He swears that John squeezes his hand back, just for a moment, before the cold fingers go slack in his and the doctor confirms, with just a brief glance, that Laurens has gone. In this lifetime, Alex follows him less than an hour later, their hands still linked because even the hardened doctor doesn’t have the heart to separate them at this stage. 

It isn’t always wars and freak accidents and jumping into the path of a bullet though. For as much as Alex loves him, and he always loves him no matter their circumstances, John is only human, only mortal. And mortals die, as Alex is only too uncomfortably aware. If Alex were able to reflect on all these lifetimes, if he had any recollection of John dying over and over again, he might conclude that John dying from illness is the worst possible outcome, especially when it is drawn out for weeks or months, or sometimes even years. In these situations, Alex always has time to prepare for the inevitable, but it doesn’t make it any easier. In fact, it probably makes it worse, watching John gradually fade away into nothing but a shell of his former wonderful self, his eyes sunken, his skin grey, practically all spindly arms and legs and cheekbones that protrude so much they have to hurt. John falls ill once, and it hits him so suddenly and so severely that there’s nothing the doctors can do. His job doesn’t pay well, and the hospital bills very quickly drain all his savings, so he moves into Alex and Eliza’s spare room. Neither of them can stomach the thought of John alone in his small apartment all day while he’s sick, and possibly dying all alone, so they insist he move in, even though John initially puts up a fight. One or both of them are always there for all his hospital appointments, and they watch as he gets weaker and weaker, his hair falling out until there’s nothing left. Throughout it all, he keeps up his good humour, smiling his trademark crooked smile until Alex believes he might just get through this thing. John lives just long enough to meet his godson, even though the doctors were adamant he should have gone weeks ago. When they get to bring Philip home from the hospital, Eliza approaches John’s bedside, the baby carefully wrapped in blankets and lets them meet each other. John reaches out one thin finger and gently touches Philip’s tiny nose, smiling from ear to ear before all the adults in the room burst into tears. John dies that same night and Alex cries into the soft blankets that cover his son, while Eliza weeps into his shoulder, both of them wondering just why, in gaining a new member of their little family, they had to lose another. 

No matter how he goes, and God help him, he always goes, the end result is always the same. Alex gets left alone. Depending on the specific lifetime, he has Eliza, his one bright spot in an otherwise pitch black world, he might have Philip, his boy who holds all his dreams, he has other friends who do their best to make him smile again. He does smile again, eventually, but he will always feel a little bit alone, like some part of him has been irretrievably lost. Sometimes, of course, when he loses John, he loses everything. His love, his family, his best friend, any hope for the future. His own life, sometimes, when he just can’t bear the lonely darkness a second later.

The ending is always the same, but if there’s one thing Alex always knows for certain is that his life is infinitely better with John in it, even if it’s short lived, rather than never knowing him at all. Of course, he knows nothing of this, has no recollection of losing John over and over again, and he can have no clue when or how the ending will come. Regardless, when he follows Aaron Burr into a tavern and meets a boy with wildly springy hair and freckles mapped across his face like constellations in the night sky, he beams and speaks the one truth he could never deny.

_“Laurens, I like you a lot.”_

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not quite sure where this little piece came from, only that I saw Hamilton in London last night (!!!!) and had too many feelings to know what to do with. I still honestly can’t believe it happened, I’m still in shock. I’d love to know what you thought - all comments, favourites and kudos are greatly appreciated. Also, if there’s anything you want to know about the show, please feel free to leave a question too. Just know that London Hamilton is six feet and four inches tall. He’s taller than Seabury standing on the box, Jefferson is at least a head and a half smaller than him, Eliza is still smaller than him when he’s sitting down, Laurens has to go up on tiptoe to talk to him and have all their touchy-feely moments and it is everything. Thanks for reading!


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